Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

In June 2013 Peter Francis, a former Metropolitan police officer, broke a 20-year silence about the role he had played in surveilling the family of Stephen Lawrence in a documentary jointly made by the Guardian and Channel 4’s Dispatches programme. Two years later, thanks in part to the programme, the Home Office established an undercover policing inquiry, commonly known as the spycops public inquiry, to shed light on the scale of surveillance of activists and trade unionists. That inquiry is now under threat.Francis had served in the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), a Met unit founded in 1968 whose officers lived…

AI chatbots based on large language models (LLMs) made dozens of major errors when asked about false claims circulating online, as part of a Full Fact trial.In some cases the LLMs corrected themselves days later, often citing our fact checking articles, but we also saw several instances where chatbots continued to respond with incorrect information.In the first five months of this test we identified 39 major AI errors.These included most models we asked wrongly stating that an AI-generated image of a cabin window, on the Ryanair flight that saw a passenger nearly sucked out of a window, was real. Other…

A traditional Ugandan ruler named as the world’s youngest monarch has died aged 34, his prime minster announced.Oyo Nyimba Kabamba Iguru Rukidi IV became king of Tooro in western Uganda at just three years old in 1995 after the death of his father.The Toroo kingdom did not disclose the cause of King Oyo’s death, but a Ugandan government minister was quoted in local media saying that he had been critically ill and was seeking treatment in the US.Though Uganda is governed by an elected president, it has several traditional kingdoms which continue to have significant cultural influence despite not having…

But in recent times, Haakon’s family has come under increasingly heavy public scrutiny and criticism.Marius Borg Høiby’s rape conviction hangs over the family. One of women was raped on Haakon’s estate at Skaugum outside Oslo.Høiby has always been treated as one of the family, although the royal house has repeatedly stressed he is not a royal.Days before his trial began, documents were released revealing Mette-Marit’s frequent contact with late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.She later apologised to King Harald and Queen Sonja for her three-year friendship with Epstein and admitted to “poor judgement”, adding in a national TV interview that she…

As an origin story, Andy Burnham: Smiths Fan has a lot going for it. It’s plainly authentic: he can name the time he saw them live (Salford University, Queen Is Dead tour, 1986). A cynical young man in a hurry might fake that now, but not back when he first said it, in 2013. Asked by Labour Uncut for his desert island tracks during his 2010 leadership bid, three of the eight were sung by Morrissey (two Smiths singles and one off Viva Hate), which is superfan territory.That’s a softball exercise to endear yourself to Labour members; you have eight…

I’ve been reviewing laptops for well over a decade, sometimes testing more than 30 devices per year. They aren’t all winners, and many should be avoided, no matter how slick the marketing or cheap the discount. Good news: It’s my job to recommend laptops that fit your budget and won’t make you regret your purchase six months later. These are my favorite laptops that I’ve tested myself and would highly recommend you buy.For more guidance, also see my recommendations in specific categories, such as the Best MacBooks, Best Gaming Laptops, Best Chromebooks, Best Budget Laptops, Best Windows Laptops, and Best…

Hours 1-4: Scope the blast radius Now I am answering what the agent actually touched. I pull the full tool-call log, every API invoked, every parameter passed, every response received, and I cross-reference it against the agent’s entitlements to see what it could reach versus what it did reach. I also check whether the agent’s own actions created new artifacts along the way: A scheduled task, a forwarding rule, a new API key, because autonomous agents are often better at persistence than the people who built them. If the entry vector looks like indirect prompt injection, I try to identify…

Circle’s CCTP V1 deprecation gives developers still using the first version of its Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) 95 days to migrate before the legacy contracts stop processing USDC transfers.The company said CCTP V1 burn limits will begin falling on Oct. 31. A burn limit caps how much USDC can be destroyed on one chain for reminting on another. Circle plans to reduce those limits and transfer capacity through November, then pause the contracts on Dec. 1. Any integration still pointing to V1 at that point will no longer move USDC across chains.The cutoff governs cross-chain routing. Circle’s migration guide says…

When the Sand Creek Fire crested Montana’s Maverick Mountain 16 days ago, Cory Birkenbuel watched as firefighters and aircraft fought to keep the flames from taking a place that had been part of his life since before he was born.  Birkenbuel likes to tell the story of his mother, Peggy, skiing at Maverick while pregnant with him. With her February due date approaching, her doctor finally told her she needed to stop and have the baby. She stopped early that month. Birkenbuel, born Feb. 16, went on to ski there himself, then around the world before becoming a ski instructor. …

Egyptian marine and offshore services provider Petroleum Marine Services (PMS) has brought to an end a major development project in Egypt’s Gulf of Suez, including the installation of an 18-kilometer gas pipeline and upgrades to the asset’s offshore platform, strengthening infrastructure at an offshore field operated by Gemsa Petroleum Company (Gempetco). Petroleum Marine Services (PMS) has wrapped up the Zaafarana offshore field development project in the Gulf of Suez; Source: PMS Petroleum Marine Services has completed the Gempetco-operated Zaafarana offshore field development project in the Gulf of Suez, executing the project under an engineering, procurement, construction, and installation (EPCI) contract.…